The profitability of an organization that utilizes machines in its operation is dependent on its ability to effectively maintain the machines in a manner that optimizes their reliability and performance. For instance, the profitability of an organization that provides maintenance service for machinery through long-term maintenance contracts relies on its ability to maintain the machines in good working order at the lowest cost. The importance of an efficient maintenance management approach become all the more important when numerous machines have to be maintained in various geographic sites around the world. Currently, maintenance of such machines are performed in an ad-hoc manner and the performance of each service contract is reliant on the experience and expertise of specific contract management personnel, resulting in varying performances for different service contracts.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,836,539 (the '539 patent) to Katou et al. describes a machine maintenance management method to quickly and accurately repair machines that operate at remote locations under severe conditions. The method of the '539 patent uses an electronic control unit (ECU) attached to the machine to monitor an operating condition of the machine. The monitored operating condition is then transmitted to a monitoring facility. When the monitored operating condition indicates a failure of the machine, the ECU determines the cause of the failure and communicates repair instructions to repair personnel. The method of the '539 patent further includes placing purchase orders for replacement parts to reduce down-time of the machine during repair.
Although the maintenance management method of the '539 patent may reduce the time taken to repair a machine at a remote location, this method only addresses machine repair after a failure has occurred. The method of the '539 patent does not provide for preventive maintenance of the machine to prevent a failure. Nor does the approach of the '539 patent allow for monitoring of the machine operating condition to identify a condition where failure may be imminent, and facilitate repair of the machine before the failure actually occurs. Additionally, the approach of the '539 patent may not be optimized to account for the challenges of simultaneous management of many maintenance contracts each comprising numerous machines.
The disclosed maintenance management system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.